Enrique Hernandez Jr. stepped down from the board of directors of Wells Fargo in April following the costliest scandal in the U.S. bank's history, amid widespread criticism from corporate-governance experts and regulators. That legacy has trailed him as chairman of the board of McDonald's, the largest U.S. publicly-traded restaurant chain, which is set to hold its annual shareholder meeting this week.

The most recent short interest data has been released for the 04/30/2018 settlement date, and we here at Dividend Channel like to sift through this fresh data and order the underlying components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average by "days to cover." There are a number of ways to look at short data, for example the total number of shares short; but one metric that we find particularly useful is the "days to cover" metric because it considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares typically traded. The number of shares short is then compared to the average daily volume, in order to calculate the total number of trading days it would take to close out all of the open short positions if every share traded represented a short position being closed.

The most recent short interest data has been released for the 04/13/2018 settlement date, and we here at Dividend Channel like to sift through this fresh data and order the underlying components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average by "days to cover." There are a number of ways to look at short data, for example the total number of shares short; but one metric that we find particularly useful is the "days to cover" metric because it considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares typically traded. The number of shares short is then compared to the average daily volume, in order to calculate the total number of trading days it would take to close out all of the open short positions if every share traded represented a short position being closed.

Same store U.S. sales, which increased by 2.9%, matched consensus, and it was driven in part by a higher check. International same store sales beat analysts' estimates, 7.85% actual, versus 4.5% predicted.

Global stocks kicked-off the week in a bullish mood Monday, with merger activity and a robust U.S. corporate earnings season helping boost markets in Europe and Asia and set up Wall Street for a positive start to the final trading day of the month.